


Sodom and Gomorrah

by PandoraButler



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Death is a character, Personification, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sodom and Gomorrah, biblical allusion, death is disapoint, infinity war spoilers?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 01:37:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14706653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PandoraButler/pseuds/PandoraButler
Summary: Thanos gets a visit from a force outside his own understanding. She shows him the gravity of what he has done and he regrets his choices in his final moments.





	Sodom and Gomorrah

There was a cry in the universe that day, a loud shrieking chilworthy cry, and it proved that Thanos had won. Every living creature sobbed at the piles of ash next to it. Everyone knew that there was no hope. There would never be any hope again, so long as Thanos had the gauntlet. 

What they didn’t realize is that hope would come to them in the most mysterious way. 

Yes, Thanos had won. Yes, people were dead. However, people died all the time. There was no stopping death, only advancing it. Death herself could feel the imbalance in the universe. She knew that something atrocious had happened. She looked at the massive increase in souls pouring into the underworld. She was furious, madder than she’d ever been in a long time. 

There was an  _ order _ to the way things took place. There was a simple  _ sequence _ of events to how people were supposed to die.  _ Mass destruction _ was not one of them. The  _ entire _ universe was not supposed to be wiped out like this. 

If there was one thing that Death hated more than Life, it was when idiots took her job into their own hands. There is a natural order; Thanos disrupted that order when he destroyed half of the universe’s population. Thanos would have to suffer the consequences. He would have to pay dearly for what he’d done. There would be no excuses. There would be no hope. There would only be punishment worthy enough to fit the crime he had committed. Death would ensure this fact. 

Thanos smiled to his achievements as he sat staring at the planet he’d supposedly ‘saved’ along with the universe. He looked at the golden gauntlet in his hand and grinned knowing that he’d won. 

If only he knew just how terribly he lost.

The beautiful scenery around him transformed into a decaying mass of destruction. Everything vanished into thin air piece by piece and at the center of it all was a mass of shadows. A figure in the shape of a woman appeared. Her fury made itself evident with the ground she walked across. Each step she took the ground beneath her decayed and vanished. Thanos couldn’t imagine what would face him. He couldn’t have imagined that he’d pissed off the very entity that took life away. 

The woman walked closer and closer to Thanos. He was too mystified to move. This powerful man, who had just destroyed half of the entire living entities across the universe, was frozen stiff before the sheer amount of power walking towards him. 

“Hello, Sodom,” the woman spoke. The voice sent chills down his spine. He couldn’t think of the right things to say. Thanos hadn’t begged for mercy a day in his life, but he was beginning to think  _ now _ would be a good time to start. 

“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you who I am, do I? We are very well acquainted as it is,” the woman’s piercing gaze didn’t waver, she only seemed to get more and more furious as the one-sided conversation continued, “I am Death. I am the very entity that has had to collect and collect the souls of the millions, billions, trillions upon trillions of souls that you have brutally destroyed. I’m the one who cleans up Life’s messes and I’ve let you go about your business all this time. I thought it wouldn’t get out of hand. I liked you, Sodom, I really did,” Death paused for a moment to maintain her composure. She was about to lose it and kill him in an instant, but that simply wouldn’t do.

“I thought we had an arrangement. I thought you would kill the beings I didn’t really like. I don’t care about how people die, as long as it’s within certain limits. But look at you, Sodom, look, you’ve gone and made a huge mess that I have to clean up,” Death pointed her finger at Thano’s face. Her nail was long and black like the air around her. Her voice was calm but cruel. The nail hadn’t even brushed up against his nose but Thanos knew it was dangerous. He was sitting before the thing  _ everyone _ feared.

“Do you think yourself to be a god? Sodom? Is that it? Do you think you can take the universe and fool around with it in your own hands? Well, let me tell you what that’s like, shall I? Allow me to explain to you the simple facts of how dying really works and then, maybe  _ then _ , if you haven’t died yet, I’ll allow this little disaster of yours to slide,” Death snapped her fingers to mock Thanos. In an instant Thanos was bound by chains he didn’t recognize in an area that didn’t seem to exist. There was nothing but blackness as far as he could see, and yet, it wasn’t dark. He could see Death before him but nothing else, because nothing else existed. 

Death picked up the gauntlet and laughed, “What is this? What is this stupid thing? Did you think that with  _ this _ on your arm you’d be powerful?” she mocked. “You mortals, I can’t begin to understand what goes on in those little brains of yours,” she finished. Death plucked out the stones one by one before crushing the gauntlet and throwing it at Thano’s feet. The gauntlet withered away into the black nothingness that surrounded them.

“Space, mind, reality, power, time, and soul,” Death examined each stone, “it’s all absolute rubbish. This isn’t power, Sodom, this isn’t even  _ close _ ,” she crushed the stones in her hand and watched the dust fall into the nothingness. It was safe to say that Thanos had no idea what was going on and was thoroughly terrified about that fact.

“Do you want to see a real soul stone?” Death reached into the darkness and grabbed a glowing green sphere. She held it in her hands and smiled, “This is what a true soul looks like. It’s bright. It’s shiny. It’s  _ pure _ ,” she crushed the soul between her hands and a light shined that made Thanos scream out in agony. This wasn’t just any soul. This soul was familiar to him. Tears escaped his eyes. He knew who it was. He  _ knew _ .

The soul solidified into a small stone. It was different from the soul stone that Thanos had used, but it somehow felt extremely close. The two were different. It was almost as if the stones he’d searched the galaxy for were manufactured items that didn’t come close to  _ true _ power. Thanos was confused. Just what had he tried to do? Were they not even the real stones?

“Sodom, you look so perplexed. No, dear, the stones you collected were most definitely what you were looking for, but they are most certainly not the most powerful things in the universe,” Death shook her head in disapproval. She dropped the solidified soul in her hands and it melted into the darkness. A shape began to appear. Thanos’s assumptions were correct. 

It was  _ her _ . 

It was  _ her _ soul that Death had shown him.

“Sodom, meet Gomorrah,” Death placed her hands on the shoulders of the being that formed. Thanos wasn’t sure if this was the real thing, or just an extremely close representation. He didn’t know his left from his right, his up from his down, nothing made sense to him anymore.

“Gamora?” he questioned. The woman stood without giving any response. It was as if she was waiting for her mother, Death, to give her the okay.

“Don’t let me stop you,” Death nudged the woman forward. She ran towards Thanos and gave him a good kick to the face.

“How dare you!” she screamed at him, “I can’t believe you really did it! You’re a sad excuse for a father. You’re a sad excuse for a  _ man _ ! You piece of unworthy scum! You don’t deserve to feel  _ special _ . You don’t deserve to revel in your win! You’ve lost something so precious and you don’t even understand what it is!” she yelled. She cried. She spoke with such frustration in her voice that made even Thanos slightly moved to hear it.This looked like Gamora and it felt like her too, but was it really? His mind couldn’t tell. 

“You’re confused,” Death appeared behind Thanos. She whispered into his ear like a serpent from the shadows. “You have every right to be. Don’t trust with your eyes, my boy, don’t trust anything you see at all. Life masks the mysteries of death,” she said, “Life hides every truth that I am. You’ll never understand what you see, as long as you’re  _ here _ ,” she snapped her fingers in front of Thanos’s face. She mocked him again. The snapping echoed in his ears and the woman before him melted into the darkness. It was just him and Death. There was nothing else. The two were back to stage one. 

Death wrapped her arms around Thanos. She still wasn’t touching him with her bare skin. Her hands were one inch away from Thanos’s face. She spoke, with a softness, the same as that of one mother to her child, “Da lieẞ der HERR Schwefel und Feuer regnen von Himmel herab auf Sodom und Gomorra,” and she smiled. She smiled and she rested her hands upon Thanos’s face. The pain was too much for him to bear. It was an instant of intensity. A small second of Death’s skin was enough for him to scream. He wasn’t sure how long he had screamed and to what extent. He just  _ did _ .

Death appeared before him. She wasn't smiling. She wasn’t mocking. A sense of extreme sadness filled her being. This was what it was like to experience the souls of  _ half _ the universe dying in an instant. She was surprised that Thanos had lasted against it as long as he had. The pain was excruciating. Every pore in his body was sweating streams. He yelled with everything he had. Pain over every inch. He felt their sorrow, their agony, their final moments. And then, he died himself.

“My poor boy,” Death spoke and closed his eyes, “if only you were smart enough to know the truth,” she looked at her notebook. Only a fraction of the lives Thanos took were put back to how they were. Each death he had managed to experience was reversed for the individual that had died. Thanos took their spot.

“Maybe,” Death began, “this will help those humans set things right. I’d do it myself, but, I think I’ve helped enough,” Death returned to her station and continued to watch the events that would unfold. If the humans didn’t fix it, she’d have to intervene much more than what she was paid for. She sighed and looked at the number of souls still gone.

“They never learn, do they?” she asked no one in particular, “They never learn at all…”

**Author's Note:**

> "Then Jehovah rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven." (Genesis 19:24)  
> ^The English translation of the German that Death speaks.
> 
> Death is constantly mocking Thanos throughout this one-shot by calling him "Sodom" in relationship to the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. This is a cruel pun because Thanos killed Gamora with his own hands instead of dying with her like in the biblical story of the two cities turned to ash by God. Death is playing God in order to destroy the "Sodom" that had turned against "Gomorrah" instead of dying with "Gomorrah." It's a weird sense of humor that Death has. I can't explain it any better than this.
> 
> Death is supposed to be contradictory. She hates dying but she loves killing. She loves Thanos but she hates him. She tells him that she will tell him the plain facts and then she doesn't speak in anything but riddles. It's a weird thing. I'm sorry if it made no sense. Death makes no sense.


End file.
